Every day as more people become connected with the internet to communicate and conduct business, the prevalence of online scams has been on the increase. With the latest statics release by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), online fraud had increased 16% last year, with about 20,000 people reporting becoming victims of online fraud and being exploited up to $70 million from Australians last year.
The ACCC last week launched an Australian Consumer Fraud Taskforce 2010 Fraud Week, issuing two new publications for online shoppers and small business owner’s advice and tips to help avoid scams/online fraud such as:
- Protecting your identity online
- Sending and transferring money safely
- Dealing with suspicious or unsolicited offers sent by email
- General online golden rules
The ACCC publications will be available free of charge from the ACCC website or by calling the ACCC Info line on 1300 302 502.
The basic ACCC internet tips to help steer clear from any online scams or fraud:
• Talk to your internet service provider about spam filtering or, alternatively, purchase spam-filtering software.
• If you want to access an internet account website, use a bookmarked link or type the address in yourself: NEVER follow a link in an email.
• Install software that protects your computer from viruses and unwanted programs and make sure it is kept up-to-date.
• Beware of free websites and downloads (such as music, adult sites, games and movies). They may install harmful programs without you knowing.
• Check the website address carefully. Scammers often set up fake websites with very similar addresses.
• Never enter your personal, credit card or online account information on a website that you are not certain is genuine.
• Never send your personal, credit card or online account details by email.
• Try to avoid using public computers (at libraries or internet cafes) to do your internet banking.
• Do not use software on your computer that auto-completes online forms. This can give internet scammers easy access to your personal and credit card details.
• Choose passwords that would be difficult for anyone else to guess.
It’s not everyday Google admits they need to improve their own SEO skills.
However - the day (and report) has arrived!
Google recently conducted an audit on its own website’s (including the Google home page) and it seems not even the Search Engine giant can master their own algorithm.
One of the biggest issues identified was Google’s current title tag. For those of you without an expert SEO company on board to explain what a title tag is, it is the blue line that appears on the top of every web page.
So, what did Google learn from this - they need to use more more descrptive words and phrases in their title tags.
Google even had images that led to “404 pages” (For those out of the loop, these are error pages that exist once the URL is obsolete).
Solution - any page that no longer exists should be redirected to its new location.
Now, let’s not get carried away with being too harsh on the Google’s SEO team though!
They scored well in regards to their internal linking structure, both from an SEO and usability perspective.
What can we learn about this?
Now that we have a bit more of an understanding in regards to the metrics Google used to give themselves this “improvement needed” evaluation - we needto be sure our website fulfills the criteria.
As a member of the BRW Investec Fast Club, our CEO, Gary Ng, was interviewed by BRW magazine’s editor in chief Sean Aylmer discussing the challenges businesses face in raising finance for growth. Alongside Gary Ng, the Fast Club also interviewed other entrepreneurs from different industries, all belonging to the BRW Fast Club . These entrepreneurs included Braeden Lord of Aussie Farmers direct, Matt Hartley of Empire Glass and Aluminium and Danny Kordahi of DK Blue.
E-Web Marketing is a member of the BRW Investment Bank Fast Club, a collaboration of senior executives from the BRW Fast 100, Fast Franchises and Fast Starters. This club was launched in late November 2009 and celebrates the achievements of successful Australian entrepreneurs who have created fast growing public and private companies. In 2009, E-Web Marketing appeared on the BRW Fast 100 list, being the only SEO company winner, after their first ever submission with a ranking of #43.
Gary Ng is the founder and CEO of E-Web Marketing and has been in the SEO field for 10 years, starting the company in 1999. E-Web Marketing was initially a Web Development company, however in 2004; the company changed to purely focused on providing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services. The business has expanded greatly since then with more than 500 clients and a growing base of over 30 staff.
To view the full interview, follow the link http://tv.brw.com.au/video/20758?play=1.
Last week’s expected decision on the controversial Google Books Library Project by a US federal judge has been postponed. The judge told a crowded courtroom last week that he will listen with an “open mind” to the arguments for and again Google’s settlement with authors and publishers about the right to scan and publish book titles. U. S. District Court Judge Denny Chin walked into the courtroom at the U. S. Court of the Southern District New York with a tall stack of comments from each of the parties, and stated: “To end the suspense, I’m not going to rule today. There’s too much to digest”.
The Google Books Library Project aims to make it easy for people to find relevant books online. Google’s objective with this project was to enable people to find books that they couldn’t normally find as might be the case with out of print books. The homepage for the project states that the ultimate goal is to “work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalogue of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books and publishers discover new readers”. Google, which has yet to present their case to the judge, have emphasised that the number of books included in the settlement is a small portion (3%) of all the titles in the world. They plan to make 20% of the catalogue free and if they choose, users can purchase the rest from Google.
The project has been under much criticism since its inception from competitors such as Microsoft and Amazon who argue that allowing the project go ahead will basically mean giving Google a license to profit from orphan works and get an unfair advantage. Other critics include some library groups, authors and other competitors. Another concern is that nothing in the settlement would protect users’ personal habits and information from being tracked for behavioural advertising. “The proposed Google book settlement is not a philanthropic effort to bring literature into the 21st century and bridge a literary divide,” opponents Microsoft, Amazon and library groups wrote in a recent filing through the Open Book Alliance. “This de facto exclusive license will provide Google with an enormous advantage over its search competitors.”
There are advocates for this plan such as the University of Michigan who praised the deal because they believe that most of the books in the settlement are scholarly works that are collecting dust on university bookshelves and wouldn’t otherwise be read. Other advocates include blind support groups who say that making publications available online means that people will have easier and cheaper access to works that are hard to come by today.
The settlement is part of Google’s ambitious effort to put the entire world’s books online, aiming to eventually be the main source for searching and buying titles.
Just when you thought there could be no more social networks left to invent, Google joins the social network party again. The reason is they say again is that roughly the same time last year, they made an announcement about a little project that was to become Google Wave
Then there was Google SideWiki which was another social functionality provided by the search giant.
So my question is where does Google Buzz fit into the equation? And the answer I have come to is that I am not too sure.
When Google Wave was announced, I had many of my non-tech friends come up to me and ask plenty of questions about the news. They wanted to know whether or not they needed Facebook, Skype, et al anymore because Google was going to promote this fantastic collaboration tool for both business and pleasure.
Last night however, not one of those people was asking me about Google Buzz.
Now I am not saying it is a guaranteed fail on Google’s part – it’s not really comparing apples with apples. But one of my associates on Twitter (@DDsD) made a very good point:
@BenTortora Not entirely,Google Buzz is like a non-real-time wave.. but that’s what people are used to, wave is too complicated for most.
And I completely agree with that statement. That is the exact spot where the application needs to sit. However, many people are active on one of the following networks:
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Foursquare
And from our research and questioning of social network users, not many want another aggregator or somewhere else to connect with people. With Facebook and MySpace about to launch full-blown email services, taking with them their massive existing user base – it seems Google is on the defensive trying to make their email client social.
Another reason why I am not completely sold on the service is the same reason why those aggregators never really perform as well as the networks independently – people are connecting with different groups of people on different networks. I know myself personally, I do not add anyone I have not met face-to-face on my Facebook; I don’t have any personal connections – only business – on LinkedIn; on Twitter I connect and share with both friends, strangers, industry leaders and bloggers that I follow. Aggregating all those different status updates and links would add more noise to those networks - the last thing any user wants from a service.
I guess it all boils down to the fact that I am not really a power user of Gmail to begin with, and the announcement hasn’t really swayed me to become one. And if Google wants it to be Wave for the masses, they are going to need to bump their awareness campaign past forcing people to check it out when they sign into their Gmail.
Since coming into the market last year, Bing has helped Microsoft improve its market share in the search engine market by offering users something different. Microsoft wanted to see what users thought of their new venture, and so enlisted the help of a qualitative research firm to study if Google users were willing to switch to Bing. The firm recruited 15 Google users and simply asked them to use Bing exclusively for one week. They did not tell them the study was sponsored by Microsoft.
The study revealed that of the 15 Google users who participated, 10 confirmed they plan to switch from Google to Bing. Their experiences are shown below:
It’s a simple question to ask, but one very few organisations have a clear answer when I ask. The reason I ask this is because of the way web pages are designed. They are designed as pages - not as an entire website.
Most of us when asked to plan the website would first think of what pages need to be included (a homepage, about us, services/products, and contact us is the default). And so you sit down with a designer and a programmer and work out how to build each individual page, and when we mention “page” you probably mean customising templates for each section.
And I am not saying that is not the right way to build a website - in fact, I think it’s a very important aspect that needs to be thought about. However, where you are missing out in that methodology is the fact that you haven’t really given much thought to the user experience.
User’s come to websites to complete an action, not to look at pages.
So when you go to do next revision of your website, or if you are starting one from scratch, rather than design pages, plan on how people should use your website.
Ask questions such as:
How will we announce to people the special offer our business has each month?
Where will new visitors/potential clients go to find out about us and what we are about?
Then - where do they go after that?
How can someone make an enquiry?
How can they find us on social networks? Do we even want that?
What is the steps I would like them to follow to make a purchase? Where should they go to make it easy to use as well as informative?
What should I blog about to encourage people to regularly visit the website?
How will I monitor and track the performance and determine what needs to be changed next?
By stepping into that frame of mind and then have a discussion with your team, you will end up with a much better result.
What Inspired This Post?
Earlier today I was looking to have a discussion and make an appointment with a bank manager about a particular situation. I will not name any particular banks, but there were a couple where it was extremely difficult to find the local number of the branch, whether or not that branch offered the particular service, and whether I could actually make an appointment rather than spend time speaking to a call centre or wait in a line.
Many of the websites were pretty, informative, but severely lacked the ability to give me any direction. I think I’m pretty good at navigating around websites, and yet the simple process of locating the phone number for the local branch proved extremely difficult.
So please consider the experience of your website’s users. Test it on family and your friends (especially your Mum or Grandma) and then make sure they are having an enjoyable and useful experience.
Back in late November I blogged about the direction of online search and where would it go from here, and as a testament to how rapidly things change in the online world we already have an answer from Google about where they want to take things.
Google Goggles is a new search service offered on mobile phones running Google’s phone operating system, Android. Google Goggles allows the user to take a photo of an object and retrieve information from the web on it. Current requirements to be able to utilise Google Goggles:
* An Android device running Android 1.6 or above
* A QVGA screen
* A camera with autofocus
There are many uses for the service that will change how you search for information:
* Get information instantly by taking photos of:
Landmarks
Books
Artwork
Products
Logos
Wines
* Using the phones internal compass, the camera display can show information about locations such as restaurants relevant to your location and the direction that you point your camera. You’re then able to bring up information on the location (i.e. ratings and comments on restaurants)
* The service can recognise text and using this feature, users are able to scan in information off business cards and save them as contacts directly to the phone
This service is still in development and is not yet able to deliver results as relevant as you would expect via a normal keyword search, however its capabilities will advance through user feedback on the relevancy of their searches and as Google grows their database. Future plans for Google Goggles are to connect it with live updates from social networking sites such as Facebook status posts and Twitter feeds, as well as adding Google’s facial recognition technology (left out of initial release due to its currently limited functionality).
This new technology springs to mind some interesting questions; What will this new technology mean for online marketing? How does Google determine the relevancy of results and analyse images specific to certain topics? How will businesses optimise to generate exposure via this new medium?
From a social perspective, with the potential introduction of facial recognition, what will this mean for privacy? By simply entering a photo you took of someone into the search, will you be able to pull up of online data related to that person from their social networking pages to images to contact details to employment information? Will we have the choice whether or not to be ‘searchable’ online or what information comes up for searches?
This certainly is a space we will be keeping a close eye on.
Last week saw our office block receive its delivery of the Yellow Pages. In the past, the massive mounds of yellow information were quickly snapped up from the foyer, however we have noticed over the past few years that the mountains don’t get moved (where are you when we need you Usher?). A week later and the stack sits as strong as it did on delivery day. It’s blatantly obvious that people are no longer making their fingers do the walking, so we figured we’d list the top 5 ways of getting some use out of the Yellow Pages (as using them for information is pretty much redundant now).
A Monitor Stand
This old standby for how to use the phonebooks has become much more inefficient, as the phone books are now half the size they used to be. Back in the day, you could get away with using a single half of the yellow pages to prop up your monitor/laptop, but now you’ll need everything from A-Z to save the neck cramps. Still, this remains the most practical use for anyone that is dismayed by the senseless culling of trees that is apparent when only 10% of the delivered books seem to get snapped up by building tenants (we’re assuming it’s those with new PCs).
Increase Grip Strength
As much as we all love working on our Captains of Crush and wrist rollers, if you want to demonstrate your grip strength in the office, you’ll need something thick and useless to tear: enter the Yellow Pages. By standing on your desk, tearing phone books and screaming at passers by, you can cement your position as the office grip expert (and also nut job… nobody will touch your lunch in the company fridge again!)
Pulling pranks on room mates that leave their door unlocked
Words can’t begin to describe how awesome this stunt is. Just watch the video.
Of course you must rally the troops afterwards and ensure it all ends up in the recycling and not the rubbish bin.
Kindling
It’s coming into summer, and the team at E-Web Marketing enjoy a BBQ as much as anyone else. Rather than getting the old gas burner out, how about getting the genuine smoky flavour from a wood grill? Getting these started isn’t always the easiest task, however by tearing up the Yellow Pages, you’ll be able to get any fire started. Tip: Once you’re cooking, try chucking a whole copy on and it’ll burn like a log through the night.
It’s a better read than Twilight
Although The Oatmeal is a little more passionate in their dislike for Twilight, some members of the E-Web team have read Twilight, and wholeheartedly agree that reading the Yellow Pages is more interesting.
Some uses that are no longer so viable:
Door stop – the books no longer have the weight in them to hold a door open, though torn in half they can still be used as a viable wedge. At least we can at least take solace in the fact that less tress are being killed now.
Flattening out creased pages – the large, smooth, surface of these books used to serve as an excellent way to flatten out creased pages by placing between A-K and L-Z. But again the weight just isn’t there anymore.
Finding business services – HA!
I am sure there are many more practical uses for the books - this was just the first list that came to mind. If you are as frustrated as we are to see these stacks of books sitting there on door steps and in foyers - only to inevitably be taken away again and sent who knows where - then please feel free to leave a comment with what you do with the Yellow Pages. Best comment receives an enormous supply of kudos from mother nature.
Google has launched a new URL shortening service, which they claim will make the Internet a safer place. With the increase in use of Twitter, and other social networking services, there has been an increase in the use of URL shortening services. Rather than having a long URL string in posts (often which have a maximum character limit), you can punch the URL into a site, and they will give you a shortened version.
According to Google, here are the major advantages:
• Stability: Google’s scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users.
• Security: As we do with web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites.
• Speed: At Google we like fast products and we’ve worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We’ll continue to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener.
You may be asking yourself why Google would be doing this, however with the rise of social networks like Twitter, people are clicking a large number of these links. They could be heading to dodgy sites without knowing it. Or, when spreading links, they could be spreading incorrect links, which would not only hurt branding, but also make it tougher for Google to crawl the web. If a link shortening service goes under, the links will no longer be valid. This hurts both users and Google.
At the moment, this service can only be used within a Google toolbar and Feedburner. Google mentions that if it proves to be successful, then they may expand it to a wider audience.
